DAMNING MENTAL HEALTH FINDINGS:
THE SHORTFALLS of the region’s “insufficiently funded” mental health system have been detailed in a damning report exposing widespread issues across Victoria.
The final report of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System found Barwon Health had the state’s longest wait time across a sample of services for autism spectrum disorder assessments — 22 months by 2020 to access the Autism Spectrum Disorder Assessment Program.
“Access to timely autism assessments in the public mental health system is essential for infant or child development and the wellbeing of the family, carers and supporters,” the report said.
“In the future system, infant, child and family area mental health and wellbeing services will address the unacceptable wait times.”
Barwon Health chief executive Frances Diver said there had been an in increase in demand for autism assessment that was challenging to manage.
“We have recently invested in more staffing to reduce our waiting list, which we expect will improve over the next 12 months,” she said.
The royal commission report said Barwon Health explained that when consumers and referrers struggled to navigate the complex mental health system, those consumers ultimately ended up seeking help from the emergency system.
“Barwon Health observed ‘the funding is capped and insufficient to meet demand in areas such as Geelong, which has experienced significant population growth’,” the report said.
The report revealed a clear definition of the role of statewide services was absent in the architecture of the current system.
Barwon Health’s mental health and drugs and alcohol services clinical director, Associate Professor Steve Moylan, told the royal commission that the model needed to be flipped — from prescribing services based on what was available within a region, to facilitating access to the required care for people, using local and specialist networks across the state, whenever and wherever they needed it.
Premier Daniel Andrews told the Geelong Advertiser the way Victoria currently used “pretty arbitrary” lines to try to define communities of interest for the purposes of mental health care “doesn't really work”.
“That’s why a redrawing of things so they’re much more local, that’s a key finding,” Mr Andrews said.
Mental Health Minister James Merlino said work would begin now on how areas were defined under the reformed system.
Ms Diver said there was a strong emphasis in the royal commission report that services need to be resourced adequately to meet the community’s needs, that people using the services needed to be linked into their community, and that those people needed to actively help shape the system going forward.
“Barwon Health looks forward to being a leading voice in that agenda for change,” Ms Diver said.